There Is A Love Bigger Than This

I love this photo of my granddaughter with her Daddy! I can hear her laugh and squeal with delight when her Daddy grabs her close and lays a big smack of a kiss on her plump little cheek. She loves her Daddy so much!  He opens his arms wide when she runs toward him. He picks her up and lifts her high into the air, safely catching to cradle her close. Such a sweet image of magnificent love this little one has for her father. Love with abandon.

The father loves her more…so much more.

There is a love bigger than this.

God, the father, loves me, his child. I like what Francis Chan wrote in his book, Crazy Love…

All my life I’ve heard people say, “God loves you.” It’s probably the most insane statement you could make to say that the eternal Creator of this universe is in love with me. There is a response that ought to take place in believers, a crazy reaction to that love. Do you really understand what God has done for you? [1]

My granddaughter’s expression of love for her father and her immense joy to be with him is the most amazing thing. For him, nothing compares to being truly, exuberantly wanted by his child. He loves his daughter so much it hurts. [2]

There is a love bigger than this.

Open your eyes to how much God desires and loves us. A father’s love for his daughter is only a faint echo of God’s great love for me and every person He made.

John 3:16 says, God so loved the world He gave…

Salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God’s personality, and I am thrilled with something infinitely greater than myself, I am caught up into the abandonment of God. Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have realized that John 3:16 means that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us. [3]

Live life experiencing a love bigger than you can possibly fathom!

Your love
Brighter than the sun
More beautiful than words could ever say
This endless light
Shining over all
It leads me to Your glory everlasting

–Hillsong United: Zion, Nothing Like Your Love

[1] Francis Chan, Crazy Love (Colorado, CO: David C. Cook, 2008), 179.

[2] Francis Chan, Crazy Love (Colorado, CO: David C. Cook, 2008), 55, a paraphrase.

[3] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, March 13